pregnancy from hell, to...birth from hell!

Ok, so I posted my "adventures" in pregnancy under "pregnancy from hell" a month or so ago, detailing all the medical problems that arose during my pregnancy. I didn't worry TOO much about childbirth, because after all, everyone told me a bad pregnancy makes for an easy delivery--hah! Not for this girl! My OB decided to induce labor on my due date because of a prior medical condition I have, and I wasn't dilated in the least. So the night before induction I went to the hospital to have prostaglandins inserted in an attempt to initiate dilation. Those babies burned and kept me up all night, but by morning I was at least 1cm dilated. We started pitocin at 8am, and I was tolerating it relatively well. The dr came in and broke my water that morning...which took 3 attempts. Several hours later, my contractions were worsening, but I could still talk through them. I was only dilated 2cm or so though. Come to realize, the IV had somehow gotten CLAMPED OFF! I hadn't had pitocin for the last 6 hours! And they had been periodically increasing it! So they hooked the pitocin back up, decreased the amount to about half...then contractions from hell ensued. Of course this is because they were starting me at a high dose considering I hadn't been on it all day. I'm ready for my epidural and I had to wait on the anesthesiologist to come from home because at this point it's after hours. We do the epidural relatively drama-free with just a couple attempts. So I'm feeling much better until about an hour later when I start to feel contractions again, and they're getting painful! Now I've never been through childbirth before, but I was pretty sure the epidural was supposed to relieve pain! After some tweaking didn't work, I got my second epidural stick! 10pm rolls around and im only dilated 4cm...not near enough. Then the baby's heart rate started to decrease, so I had to lay on my left side and be hooked up to oxygen. OB comes in and says baby has had enough and we need to do a c-section. Lovely. So we wait on surgical staff to arrive, and the procedure went fine. So after 9 months and delivery from hell, I am now the proud mamma of a healthy, happy, baby girl :) Guess it was all worth it ;)